Remember the poster of the kitten hanging off a branch that hung in some bedrooms in the 1970's? "Right when I learned the answers, they changed the questions." That's the story of my life. I thought I would write it down.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Reading A Memoir

I'm reading Madhur Jaffrey's memoir. My uncle took a memoir writing class a few years ago and he explained to me that the difference between a memoir and a biography is that a biography tells the whole story of the subject and a memoir is built around one or two themes. Climbing the Mango Trees is about family and food - not all that surprising since it's written by a cookbook author.

What I've been thinking is that perhaps Jaffrey might have thought her childhood was pretty ordinary (but I'm only about 100 pages in) but what makes it interesting to me is that she grew up in India. The book is filled with things like mango trees and tamarind chutney, and she grew up in a multiple-family household led by her grandfather, surrounded by many many cousins.

I think my childhood was pretty ordinary, but it was my childhood and it was great. I say that knowing that our family experienced a great loss at the beginning of my and No's childhood, but that's a question mark that can't be guessed at. Could I pick out a theme around which a memoir could be built?

One of the things I'm doing with this blog is posting super-short stories from my life, mostly my young life. "Write what you know." It's practice in writing and part of my daily practice of writing.

That's all I have to say about that. This is my 200th post, just past the halfway point in the calendar year.

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About Me

A close friend of mine and her old friends call themselves the YaYas, after the book “Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood.” I'm a relative newcomer to this crowd, as I met Princess Words of Thunder in 1996, but some years ago she demanded that I adopt a YaYa name. I chose Princess Always Learning, because I always, always am.
I resolved that I would write every day in 2007. UPDATE for 2008: I will write three times a week. I'm storing it all here.